Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steinhauser" data-source="post: 5031983" data-attributes="member: 86705">All true. The D&D universe is certainly not goverend by science as we know it, and it would be silly to suggest otherwise.However, there is still an underlying and unwritten rule that unless a phenomenon is explained outright as a magical, divine, planar, elemental, supernatural, psionic, or otherwise unearthly effect, that phenomenon will almost always adhere to the normal rules of science and common sense. In the D&D universe anything is certainly possible, but if a given thing is not explicitly noted as an otherworldly possibility, it will be assumed to work just like the real world. D&D blacksmiths may be working with elemental earth and fire, but their procedures for making common peasant items are the same as ours - unless a campaign-specific rule states otherwise.A dolphin, too, would not be considered a fish, unless a spell that affected fish specifically deemed it so. (Not to mention the "porpoise" entry in the MM names it a mammal.)Thus, vermin should by all means be considered animals. There is nothing sufficiently magical or otherworldly about the either to justify the split types. Giving them a subtype even keeps them vermin while letting them be animals; there is no flavour lost.</blockquote>